Many computer systems include repositories or other storage facilities for holding objects. The systems typically provide some search functionality for a user to identify the object(s) that the user is interested in. For example, a customer relationship management (CRM) solution may offer many different types of business objects to a system user (accounts, products, activities, marketing plans, etc.) There may be many object instances stored in the repository for each object type.
Searching for existing data (for example account data, running marketing plans, etc) is an important task for a user. Some systems include objects of several different types, where each object type is managed by a separate application program. Such systems may be configured such that the user must first initiate the application program associated with the type of the sought object(s). The initiated application program provides a search function for identifying objects of the type associated with the program. If the user thereafter wishes to search for objects of a different type, perhaps upon discovering that the initiated application was not the correct one, the user must initiate the right application before entering and executing the new search.